Freud - Complete Works (807 page)

An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis

5006

   We have heard how the weak and
immature ego of the first period of childhood is permanently
damaged by the stresses put upon it in its efforts to fend off the
dangers that are peculiar to that period of life. Children are
protected against the dangers that threaten them from the external
world by the solicitude of their parents; they pay for this
security by a fear of
loss of love
which would deliver them
over helpless to the dangers of the external world. This factor
exerts a decisive influence on the outcome of the conflict when a
boy finds himself in the situation of the Oedipus complex, in which
the threat to his narcissism by the danger of castration,
reinforced from primaeval sources, takes possession of him. Driven
by the combined operation of these two influences, the contemporary
real danger and the remembered one with its phylogenetic basis, the
child embarks on his attempts at defence - repressions - which are
effective for the moment but nevertheless turn out to be
psychologically inadequate when the later re-animation of sexual
life brings a reinforcement to the instinctual demands which have
been repudiated in the past. If this is so, it would have to be
said from a biological standpoint that the ego comes to grief over
the task of mastering the excitations of the early sexual period,
at a time when its immaturity makes it incompetent to do so. It is
in this lagging of ego development behind libidinal development
that we see the essential precondition of neurosis; and we cannot
escape the conclusion that neuroses could be avoided if the
childish ego were spared this task - if, that is to say, the
child’s sexual life were allowed free play, as happens among
many primitive peoples. It may be that the aetiology of neurotic
illnesses is more complicated than we have here described it; if
so, we have at least brought out one essential part of the
aetiological complex. Nor should we forget the phylogenetic
influences, which are represented in some way in the id in forms
that we are not yet able to grasp, and which must certainly act
upon the ego more powerfully in that early period than later. On
the other hand, the realization dawns on us that such an early
attempt at damming up the sexual instinct, so decided a
partisanship by the young ego in favour of the external as opposed
to the internal world, brought about by the prohibition of
infantile sexuality, cannot be without its effect on the
individual’s later readiness for culture. The instinctual
demands forced away from direct satisfaction are compelled to enter
on new paths leading to substitutive satisfaction, and in the
course of these
détours
they may become desexualized
and their connection with their original instinctual aims may
become looser. And at this point we may anticipate the thesis that
many of the highly valued assets of our civilization were acquired
at the cost of sexuality and by the restriction of sexual motive
forces.

An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis

5007

   We have repeatedly had to insist
on the fact that the ego owes its origin as well as the most
important of its acquired characteristics to its relation to the
real external world. We are thus prepared to assume that the
ego’s pathological states, in which it most approximates once
again to the id, are founded on a cessation or slackening of that
relation to the external world. This tallies very well with what we
learn from clinical experience - namely, that the precipitating
cause of the outbreak of a psychosis is either that reality has
become intolerably painful or that the instincts have become
extraordinarily intensified - both of which, in view of the rival
claims made on the ego by the id and the external world, must lead
to the same result. The problem of psychoses would be simple and
perspicuous if the ego’s detachment from reality could be
carried through completely. But that seems to happen only rarely or
perhaps never. Even in a state so far removed from the reality of
the external world as one of hallucinatory confusion, one learns
from patients after their recovery that at the time in some corner
of their mind (as they put it) there was a normal person hidden,
who, like a detached spectator, watched the hubbub of illness go
past him. I do not know if we may assume that this is so in
general, but I can report the same of other psychoses with a less
tempestuous course. I call to mind a case of chronic paranoia in
which after each attack of jealousy a dream conveyed to the analyst
a correct picture of the precipitating cause, free from any
delusion. An interesting contrast was thus brought to light: while
we are accustomed to discover from the dreams of neurotics
jealousies which are alien to their waking lives, in this psychotic
case the delusion which dominated the patient in the day-time was
corrected by his dream. We may probably take it as being generally
true that what occurs in all these cases is a psychical
split
. Two psychical attitudes have been formed instead of a
single one - one, the normal one, which takes account of reality,
and another which under the influence of the instincts detaches the
ego from reality. The two exist alongside of each other. The issue
depends on their relative strength. If the second is or becomes the
stronger, the necessary precondition for a psychosis is present. If
the relation is reversed, then there is an apparent cure of the
delusional disorder. Actually it has only retreated into the
unconscious - just as numerous observations lead us to believe that
the delusion existed ready-made for a long time before its manifest
irruption.

An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis

5008

   The view which postulates that in
all psychoses there is a
splitting of the ego
could not call
for so much notice if it did not turn out to apply to other states
more like the neuroses and, finally, to the neuroses themselves. I
first became convinced of this in cases
fetishism
. This
abnormality, which may be counted as one of the perversions, is, as
is well known, based on the patient (who is almost always male) not
recognizing the fact that females have no penis - a fact which is
extremely undesirable to him since it is a proof of the possibility
of his being castrated himself. He therefore disavows his own
sense-perception which showed him that the female genitals lack a
penis and holds fast to the contrary conviction. The disavowed
perception does not, however, remain entirely without influence
for, in spite of everything, he has not the courage to assert that
he actually saw a penis. He takes hold of something else instead -
a part of the body or some other object - and assigns it the role
of the penis which he cannot do without. It is usually something
that he in fact saw at the moment at which he saw the female
genitals, or it is something that can suitably serve as a symbolic
substitute for the penis. Now it would be incorrect to describe
this process when a fetish is constructed as a splitting of the
ego; it is a compromise formed with the help of displacement, such
as we have been familiar with in dreams. But our observations show
us still more. The creation of the fetish was due to an intention
to destroy the evidence for the possibility of castration, so that
fear of castration could be avoided. If females, like other living
creatures, possess a penis, there is no need to tremble for the
continued possession of one’s own penis. Now we come across
fetishists who have developed the same fear of castration as
non-fetishists and react in the same way to it. Their behaviour is
therefore simultaneously expressing two contrary premisses. On the
one hand they are disavowing the fact of their perception - the
fact that they saw no penis in the female genitals; and on the
other hand they are recognizing the fact that females have no penis
and are drawing the correct conclusions from it. The two attitudes
persist side by side throughout their lives without influencing
each other. Here is what may rightly be called a splitting of the
ego. This circumstance also enables us to understand how it is that
fetishism is so often only partially developed. It does not govern
the choice of object exclusively but leaves room for a greater or
lesser amount of normal sexual behaviour; sometimes, indeed, it
retires into playing a modest part or is limited to a mere hint. In
festishists, therefore, the detachment of the ego from the reality
of the external world has never succeeded completely.

An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis

5009

   It must not be thought that
fetishism presents an exceptional case as regards a splitting of
the ego; it is merely a particularly favourable subject for
studying the question. Let us return to our thesis that the
childish ego, under the domination of the real world, gets rid of
undesirable instinctual demands by what are called repressions. We
will now supplement this by further asserting that, during the same
period of life, the ego often enough finds itself in the position
of fending off some demand from the external world which it feels
distressing and that this is effected by means of a
disavowal
of the perceptions which bring to knowledge this
demand from reality. Disavowals of this kind occur very often and
not only with fetishists; and whenever we are in a position to
study them they turn out to be half-measures, incomplete attempts
at detachment from reality. The disavowal is always supplemented by
an acknowledgement; two contrary and independent attitudes always
arise and result in the situation of there being a splitting of the
ego. Once more the issue depends on which of the two can seize hold
of the greater intensity.

   The facts of this splitting of
the ego, which we have just described, are neither so new nor so
strange as they may at first appear. It is indeed a universal
characteristic of neuroses that there are present in the
subject’s mental life, as regards some particular behaviour,
two different attitudes, contrary to each other and independent of
each other. In the case of neuroses, however, one of these
attitudes belongs to the ego and the contrary one, which is
repressed, belongs to the id. The difference between this case and
the other is essentially a topographical or structural one, and it
is not always easy to decide in an individual instance with which
of the two possibilities one is dealing. They have, however, the
following important characteristic in common. Whatever the ego does
in its efforts of defence, whether it seeks to disavow a portion of
the real external world or whether it seeks to reject an
instinctual demand from the internal world, its success is never
complete and unqualified. The outcome always lies in two contrary
attitudes, of which the defeated, weaker one, no less than the
other, leads to psychical complications. In conclusion, it is only
necessary to point out how little of all these processes becomes
known to us through our conscious perception.

An Outline Of Psycho-Analysis

5010

CHAPTER IX

THE
INTERNAL WORLD

We have no way of conveying knowledge of a
complicated set of simultaneous events except by describing them
successively; and thus it happens that all our accounts are at
fault to begin with owing to one-sided simplification and must wait
till they can be supplemented, built on to, and so set right.

   The picture of an ego which
mediates between the id and the external world, which takes over
the instinctual demands of the former in order to lead them to
satisfaction, which derives perceptions from the latter and uses
them as memories, which, intent on its self-preservation, puts
itself in defence against excessively strong claims from both sides
and which, at the same time, is guided in all its decisions by the
injunctions of a modified pleasure principle - this picture in fact
applies to the ego only up to the end of the first period of
childhood, till about the age of five. At about that time an
important change has taken place. A portion of the external world
has, at least partially, been abandoned as an object and has
instead, by identification, been taken into the ego and thus become
an integral part of the internal world. This new psychical agency
continues to carry on the functions which have hitherto been
performed by the people in the external world: it observes the ego,
gives it orders, judges it and threatens it with punishments,
exactly like the parents whose place it has taken. We call this
agency the
super-ego
and are aware of it in its judicial
functions as our
conscience
. It is a remarkable thing that
the super-ego often displays a severity for which no model has been
provided by the real parents, and moreover that it calls the ego to
account not only for its deeds but equally for its thoughts and
unexecuted intentions, of which the super-ego seems to have
knowledge. This reminds us that the hero of the Oedipus legend too
felt guilty for his deeds and submitted himself to self-punishment,
although the coercive power of the oracle should have acquitted him
of guilt in our judgement and his own. The super-ego is in fact the
heir to the Oedipus complex and is only established after that
complex has been disposed of. For that reason its excessive
severity does not follow a real model but corresponds to the
strength of the defence used against the temptation of the Oedipus
complex. Some suspicion of this state of things lies, no doubt, at
the bottom of the assertion made by philosophers and believers that
the moral sense is not instilled into men by education or acquired
by them in their social life but is implanted in them from a higher
source.